technical preconditions be met: the existence of reliable
methods of communication, a common body of expert
knowledge, and an acknowledged group of experts able to
adjudicate disputes. First cartographers, then mathematicians,
then anatomists, and then astronomers ...^2
Therefore, the idea of discovery is inseparably linked with
ideas of “exploration, progress, originality, authenticity, and
novelty. It is a characteristic product of the late
Renaissance.”^3Copernicus (1473–1543), the Prussian astronomer who discovered
heliocentrism (placing the sun at the center of our solar system), was
fortunate to live during “the very decades when a great many changes, now
barely visible to modern eyes, were transforming the ‘data available’ to all
book readers. A closer study of these changes could help to explain why
systems of charting the planets, mapping the earth, synchronizing
chronologies, codifying laws, and compiling bibliographies were all
revolutionized before the end of the 16th century.”^4 The starwatchers
comprehended that the heavens could be described with charts and tables;
the early anatomists—cartographers of the body—would similarly map
the intricate and predictable anatomy of humankind.
While it took a full century for print culture to assimilate scribal
records of the ancient philosophers into coherently presented books, the
simultaneous distribution of well-made figures and charts enhanced the
works. It was one thing for a Florentine publisher to present, say, the
philosophical works of Aristotle, it would be quite another for a 16th-
century savant to revisit the works of Galen, the most authoritative
physician-author in human history. The year 1543 witnessed the
publication of two of the greatest books in human history: Copernicus’s
groundbreaking manuscript, published in Nuremberg in the year of his
death, and an anatomy book by a twenty-nine-year-old, Andreas Vesalius,
who would dare to challenge the great Galen. His book, De Humani
Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), a tour de force
folio, would set the stage for a renaissance in medical education.
During the Sack of Constantinople, in 1204, crusaders (inspired by Pope
Innocent and supplied by Venice) pillaged and purged the ancient city of